Page 147 - Retaining Top Employees

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Making the Difference with Orientation 135

The Link Between Retention and Orientation

As we saw in Chapter 2, if the face of the golf club is out of
alignment when the club hits the ball, the ball will end up far
away from our target. So it is with employee retention. You’ve
set the retention goals you wish to achieve (pictured the shot,
Chapter 3), selected the right retention tools (made the club
selection, Chapters 4, 5, and 6), and communicated effectively
pre-hire (backswing, Chapters 7). Now you reach the point of
impact, when the employee joins your organization. This is a
crucial point.
In a new employee’s first few days, the organization sets the
direction in which the employee will travel. If the organization is
out of alignment with its employees at this point, there can be
no surprise if weeks, months, or years later it finds that it has
missed its retention targets. The key to ensuring that employees
start off in the right direction toward your retention goal is effec-
tive orientation.
Let’s be frank about this—orientation is the Cinderella of
training. Despite being the most-attended training process on
the planet, orientation is considered “boring,” “crashingly dull,”
“tedious,” “time-consuming,” “wasteful,” and “difficult” ... to
quote just some of the milder words I’ve heard used.
As a result, orientation is often done badly—if at all.
Consequently, it gets a bad name and becomes either a mostly
ignored “junior playpen” for trainers to test their wings or a
sleep-inducing non-event—or, worst of all, both.

Retention Rejuvenates Orientation
In the mid- to late 1990s,the issue of employee retention
put the importance of an effective orientation program back
on top of the agenda for many employers. Organizations that already
had an effective orientation program had a competitive edge.
Don’t let your orientation program be only an adjunct of your
retention activities.There are sound operational reasons why an effec-
tive orientation program is essential for all organizations—whether
they have difficulties with retention or not.